That article made a number of mistakes, for starters it assumed a 55/45 free vs paid ratio when little indicators since then make me think it's more like 90/10. Then it used ratings that were a couple of days out of date compared to the 10 million apps mark, also it took the 10 million world wide and applied it to US only ratings...

So it could be 10% of that or otherwise completely off, but regardless I'm stoked at how well Chopper is doing, and am crazy with anticipation to see how many downloads it ends up with at the end of the month.

And yes, I'm definitely overdue to give iDevGames a donation. I can honestly say that without iDevGames I would not be in this position right now. So a huge thanks to Carlos and to everyone on iDevGames for all the support over the past 5 years!

AnotherJake Wrote:Dude, no kidding! I think it's just a quick cash grab for them. If you establish your Solitaire first then it has more brand identity and thus more free revenue. Kinda lame if you ask me, but whatever, I "get" the fact that they have families to feed.

Pretty much right on the money. A mad dash to the no-brainer games (Solitaire, Sudoku, Mahjong Solitaire, any board or casino game, match 3's, etc.) with the mindset of "It's better to be first than it is to be better" which is also (unfortunately) the first rule of marketing. (That said, if you DO buy a Sudoku, Justin Fic is responsible for Big Bang. Just sayin' )

Now that the dust has settled from that nonsense, hopefully we'll start seeing the bigger publishers take more chances on original titles. Believe me, I'm pushing for it just as much as anyone.

The gist of the stats is over 20,000 downloads in the first month, currently roughly 500 a day.

The iPhone App Store is a huge opportunity, I hope all of you who can jump on it will do so.

Thanks for sharing those stats! I'm shaking because if I even achieve 10% of that I'll be rich! I think I'm going to code for 24 strait hours or so to finish my port.

Do you think the $7.99 price point is a good price? I can't decide whether to sell GL Golf for $4.99 and try to get it high in the top paid apps, or charge $7.99 like I originally wanted too. I think if I start out with 5 courses that might be enough to justify a higher price.

I've been thinking about price points too. I am intensely curious about how much volume there is available down on the low end, so I have two games in the works -- one mid-priced (being a pain in the butt to develop right now) and the other at $1. The $1 one is just a generic space game, but I've been putting in a lot of effort to at least try to make it good. Even though it's 2D, I'm using 3D meshes for all the objects. Also putting in as many effects as I can get away with. I just finished my main explosion effect yesterday and I laughed the first time I saw it because it's a little over-the-top (which of course means it's just enough ).

Seeing reubert's sales stats gives me renewed hope that it might actually be worth more than I initially thought -- even at $1. I mean, if I can average 100 downloads per day with it (maybe wishful thinking, but you never know...), then that's $36,500 (before Apple's take (and the tax man of course)) for a year's worth of sales for an (as well-done as I feel I can justify time for) itty-bitty game. So far it looks like it'll be good enough that I could charge more for it, but I really wanna see what kind of volume is down there at $1...

The rule is to "charge what the market will bear". The issue is that no one knows exactly what that is yet for iPhone, and for what quality of product. And obviously, as the amount of income to be earned for "relatively" low amounts of labor continues, sales for individual products will continue to fall as they become diluted by competition. We're still fairly early in the game though, so hopefully we can all still get a decent take on it. I wish I could magically make games appear out of thin air over night, but man, this stuff takes a LOT of work for even decent, simple games!